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Howdy, friendly reading person!I'm on a bit of a hiatus right now, but only to work on other projects -- one incredibly exciting example being the newly-released kids' science book series Things That Make You Go Yuck!If you're a science and/or silliness fan, give it a gander! See you soon!

I had another interview on Friday. It didn’t go quite as well as the last one, though. Which is quite an accomplishment, if you think about it. I’d have thought there was nowhere to go but ‘up’ from there. It seems I was misinformed.

Actually, this one started out pretty well. Except that it didn’t, really, come to think of it. It was the middle part that went well. The beginning was lonely, and weird, and a little scary. The end was just a disaster. The middle was definitely the best part. The whole thing reminded me of Jurassic Park, actually.

(The problem with Jurassic Park is that I read the book first, and preferred the original ending. So I was all miffed and poopy about the movie version. Damned Hollywood ‘end on a high note’ buffoons. Does every goddamned movie made have to have a happy ending, fer chrissakes? I honestly think some of the writers out there are just trying to see how friggin’ deep they can dig a hole for their characters and still pull ’em out. I’m surprised they didn’t find some asshatted way to keep the Titanic floating in that movie.)

Okay, I’m off my ‘movie soapbox’ now. For one thing, it’s not helping anybody, and it’s not going to change the way those Hollywood lollygaggers do their jobs. In the meantime, I’m just showing how few movies that I watch by citing examples from before most of you were frickin’ born. So I’m done. Next topic.

Which would be the interview, I guess, but I’m really not all that interested in reliving the horror that was the second half of it. Let’s just say that I’m not going to be hovering over the phone on Monday, expecting a callback for a second look. Not that I pissed anybody off or anything like that. I didn’t tell any jokes about nuns or donkeys or ears of corn.

(Though maybe I should have; at least I’d have gotten a chuckle out of something that day.)

Nor did I whip out the old lumber and skip up and down the hall, waving it back and forth and singing, ‘I’ve Got a Secret‘.

(I’m saving that one for the in-laws’ Christmas party. That’ll be a hoot.)

So, I suppose it’s just possible that the other candidates failed as miserably as I did to meet the requirements for this job, and that I’ll get a call, after all. I didn’t really do that badly, and stranger things have happened. A few years ago, I showed up forty minutes late to an interview, listened to their technical people describe the sorts of technology they work with, and honestly said, ‘Um, I don’t really do any of that. I do this, and this, and a little of this thing over here, but your stuff? I haven’t even heard of some of that shit.‘

And, of course, they called me back for a second interview. Which I refused, as it happens, and that makes me happy. They had to feel like Lucy Liu asking Tom Arnold to have sex with her, and being told, ‘Um… nah. You know, I’m just not that into it.‘ Hee! I may have even said, ‘Dude. What the fuck are you thinking?‘

(But probably I didn’t. You know, just because.)

In any case, I don’t expect much to come out of Friday’s interview. But that’s three I’ve been on now, and so I’m hoping something develops on one of those fronts. I have to say, getting back to work isn’t going to be easy. I’ve been getting a lot of sleep lately. (On nights when I don’t sit up until four in the morning translating and un-translating tripe about pirates, that is.) So the old 9-to-5 schedule is going to be a bit of a shock to the system. I may have to sleep at the office for the first couple of weeks, just to make sure I can manage to be at my desk when the workday starts. I may be snoring and drooling all over my keyboard, but I’ll be there, dammit! Be careful what you wish for, prospective employers.

All right, enough about that. Work talk is for weekdays. Weekends were made for Michelob, or something like that. Not that we have any Michelob in the house, mind you — it’s just a figure of speech. Certainly, there are other beers in the fridge that would be happy to fill in for the absent Mic’s. Well, maybe not happy. I suppose if someone threw me in a frickin’ cold box for a week, then popped the top of my head off and poured all my tasty liquids out, I probably wouldn’t be all that pleased. I probably wouldn’t be thinking much at all at that point, if I can believe anything I learned in anatomy class. But assuming that I were still miraculously conscious, I’m fairly certain that the first thought popping into my brain wouldn’t be, ‘Oh, goody!‘ Now that I’ve written about it, it might be, ‘Man, I fuckin’ knew this was going to happen!‘ But not ‘Goody!‘ Not by a longshot.

Okay, where the hell was I? Trying not to talk about jobs, if I recall.

(And I don’t, so I cheated and looked. Eh.)

So, how about I wrap up with a few words about television, then? Or better yet, telly. Maybe you noticed a few weeks ago when the BBC announced that it would be making its entire ‘programme’ archive available for download, for free. How fuckin’ cool is that, eh? Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Doctor Who, Dangermouse, Young Ones, the Hitchhiker’s Guide series… all at our grubby little Yankee fingertips. Of course, we’re all going to need four-terabyte drives and T3’s running into our dens to handle the bandwidth, but it’ll be worth it, just for the sheer coolness of it all. And never mind that I already have half the shit I just mentioned on videocassette — I’ll download it again, along with hours and hours of its closest friends. I’ll spin that shit off to optical disks if I have to — this is pure gold we’re talking about here.

Of course, we do have a bit of time to prepare, it seems. It’ll take a while to get things hooked up on the BBC end. And if it takes more than a year or so, someone else may take over and nix the whole deal. We’re walking a bit of a fine line, I imagine. But I choose to be optimistic. So start saving your pennies, folks. Don’t buy that extra mocha latte at lunch; squirrel those two bucks away toward paying for a big fat pipe running right off the ‘net backbone and into your living room. Some day, you’ll be awfully glad that you did. Just don’t let me catch you downloading old Are You Being Served? episodes. We’ve only got room enough for the good shit. Don’t go slowing down everybody’s connection just for crap, okay?

(Benny Hill, on the other hand, is just fine. Recommended, even. Look, I never claimed to have ‘taste’, all right? I just know what I like.)